The Cincinnati Enquirer |
Editorial Page
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Wednesday July 8, 1998 |
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David Lippert claims that the founding fathers were men of Christian faith [Founding fathers unashamed of religion, July 7, 1998]. The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence, but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the miracles of the Old and New testaments. A few quotes should suffice:
John Adams: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!’" Adams also championed The Treaty of Tripoli, which in Article 11 begins "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." Thomas Jefferson: "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." |
James Madison: "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
 Quotes of a similar nature can be found by Thomas Pain, Ethan Allen, Benjamin Franklin, etc. The U.S. was founded during the Age of Reason, in opposition to oppressive religion. Then as now, freedom is the distance between church and state. Todd Brennan
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